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Dec 01 2022
Zero Trust Essentials eBook
Oct 20 2022
Protecting Your Cloud Environments With Zero Trust
When moving to a cloud infrastructure, businesses should be looking toward a Zero Trust strategy. This security model protects the cloud from the inside out using the principle of least privilege to grant secure access to any company resource. Eliminating implicit trust helps prevent cloud-related data breaches and provides a security shield for remote workers that use BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) to access corporate resources.
Zero Trust Prevents Compromised Credentials
Cloud environments are dynamic and require a lot of security, especially in a public cloud, where all data might not be protected and phishing attacks run rampant. In fact, 80% of cloud security incidents are due to stolen or lost credentials. Just earlier this year, the Lapsus$ ransomware group managed to breach a third party providerâs Okta authentication and even published screenshots for all to see.
This is where Zero Trust comes into the picture. Zero Trust helps mitigate unauthorized access in cloud environments by enforcing granular access to each user or device attempting to access a workload or resource. This added measure is essential for securing remote workers and third parties from any potential data leaks.
Organizations must adopt Zero Trust principles when building on cloud architectures. Hereâs how your organization can successfully leverage the principles to keep cloud environments safe.
5 Ways Zero Trust Secures Cloud Environments
Always Assume a Threat
With traditional security methods, thereâs no cause for concern until a threat is detected. And by that time, itâs too late. Zero trust automatically assumes by default that everyone using the network is a threat until verified. Â
Continuous Authentication
Following the ânever trust, always verifyâ motto, users will be continuously asked to verify themselves. Not on a one-time basis, but each time they require access to a cloud resource. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) technology is an integral component of a successful Zero Trust strategy.
Device Access Control
Zero Trust also monitors how many different devices are in the network as well as those trying to gain access at any given time. A proper Device Posture Check will ensure that every device is assessed for risk without any exposure to the network.
Microsegmentation
Microsegmentation is another way that Zero Trust protects cloud environments. It divides the infrastructure into smaller zones that require additional verification for access. This is also called minimizing the blast radius of a threat.Â
Lateral movement can occur when an attacker infiltrates the outside barrier and moves within the network. Even when the entry point is discovered with a traditional security method, it can be difficult to detect the threat. During the time it takes to find them, they can move laterally and exfiltrate data. Every user in the network is required to be verified when they enter different zones, drastically reducing the possibility of a breach.
Logging & Monitoring
Having several methods of verification means nothing without constant monitoring. Inspect and log all traffic to identify any suspicious behavior or anomalies. Analyzing the log data can help quickly identify threats and improve security policies.
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Zero Trust Security: An Enterprise Guide
Aug 11 2021
Zero trust: Bringing security up to speed for the work-from-anywhere age
The first step toward a zero-trust environment consists of establishing a zero-trust network architecture that covers all aspects of users interacting with corporate internal and cloud-based IT resources, wherever the users or the resources might be located.
This requires an evaluation of the context of user access, combined with the creation of risk profiles. Based on these risk profiles and continuous context analysis, the security team can implement and enforce centralized security policies â independently from any old-fashioned network firewall perimeter.
Establishing context entails checking numerous aspects such as the IP address and geographic location, device status (corporate-owned, privately owned), OS status (jailbroken/rooted or secure), patch status, and so on, as well as verifying digital certificates for identity and access management.
The constant evaluation of all this data is then matched with predefined granular policies. For example, businesses might determine that employees can only access sensitive resources if the device is fully secured, and the user is identified via multi-factor authentication. Otherwise, a pop-up notification will inform the employee how to proceed, while the device might be put into quarantine until its desired state is achieved.
Jun 11 2021
The 6 steps to implementing zero trust
In their minds, this security approach can only be applied to fresh, or âgreenfield,â environments â and even there organizations are hesitant as they may believe security will hinder business agility.
The true reason for why businesses are hesitant when it comes to zero trust is due to a lack of understanding of the process and the unfortunate influence of the myths stated above. Forresterâs zero trust framework gives a clear overview of the seven pillars that provide a comprehensive zero trust strategy: data, people, workloads, devices, networks, automation and orchestration, and visibility and analytics. Even after seeing the different elements set out, businesses may feel overwhelmed by the number of areas that can be linked with zero trust â itâs the classic âboiling the oceanâ problem.
But what if companies instead took a more incremental and agile approach where benefits are realized at each stage along the way? This approach not only results in a regular and measurable improvement in security posture, but it also facilitates the integration of further capabilities throughout the process.
Implementing zero trust
Nov 24 2020
Zero Trust architectures: An AWS perspective
Our mission at Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to innovate on behalf of our customers so they have less and less work to do when building, deploying, and rapidly iterating on secure systems. From a security perspective, our customers seek answers to the ongoing question What are the optimal patterns to ensure the right level of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of my systems and data while increasing speed and agility? Increasingly, customers are asking specifically about how security architectural patterns that fall under the banner of Zero Trust architecture or Zero Trust networking might help answer this question.
Given the surge in interest in technology that uses the Zero Trust label, as well as the variety of concepts and models that come under the Zero Trust umbrella, weâd like to provide our perspective. Weâll share our definition and guiding principles for Zero Trust, and then explore the larger subdomains that have emerged under that banner. Weâll also talk about how AWS has woven these principles into the fabric of the AWS cloud since its earliest days, as well as into many recent developments. Finally, weâll review how AWS can help you on your own Zero Trust journey, focusing on the underlying security objectives that matter most to our customers. Technological approaches rise and fall, but underlying security objectives tend to be relatively stable over time. (A good summary of some of those can be found in the Design Principles of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.)
Definition and guiding principles for Zero Trust
Letâs start out with a general definition. Zero Trust is a conceptual model and an associated set of mechanisms that focus on providing security controls around digital assets that do not solely or fundamentally depend on traditional network controls or network perimeters. The zero in Zero Trust fundamentally refers to diminishingâpossibly to zero!âthe trust historically created by an actorâs location within a traditional network, whether we think of the actor as a person or a software component. In a Zero Trust world, network-centric trust models are augmented or replaced by other techniquesâwhich we can describe generally as identity-centric controlsâto provide equal or better security mechanisms than we had in place previously. Better security mechanisms should be understood broadly to include attributes such as greater usability and flexibility, even if the overall security posture remains the same. Letâs consider more details and possible approaches along the two dimensions.
Source: Zero Trust architectures: An AWS perspective | Amazon Web Services
SANS Webcast – Zero Trust Architecture
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sFOdpMLXQg
